Clinton vs Obama on the NIE
Tue Mar 04, 2008 at 05:14:07 AM PDT
To me this whole argument over the NIE is a perfect encapsulation of the differences between the two candidates. What I find amusing is that the same people who are criticizing Senator Clinton for not reading the NIE are perfectly willing to accept that Senator Obama made his decision without reading the NIE, or receiving any briefing. If Senator Obama didn't have to read the NIE to validate his judgment, then why is it that Senator Clinton is a traitor and murderer, according to comments on various blogs, for not reading the NIE? (h/t to Eriposte for an excellent discussion of that very issue here)
Although Senator Obama managed to get lucky on this issue (and what else could one say since he did absolutely no investigation before making his pronouncement from the gut?) do we really want another President who congratulates himself for decisions he made without looking at the evidence first? Here is a comment that captures that same thought to Politico in a piece about the NIE:
Obama is lucky enough not have been in the Senate at the time. His inexperience frees him from the Congress Curse when it comes to running for president. However, before rushing to vote for someone who somehow knew we should not go to war, you should question the basis for his knowledge. It's one thing to have someone read the NIE and say it's bogus, but in his case, he had no access to the classified portions. He made his conclusion based on what the false info was known to him at the time. Would you really want a president who, based on the false info being true, would still oppose military action?
Posted By: Macslut - Hi MK | May 28, 2007 at 01:48 PM
Both Senator Obama and David Axelrod seem confused on how important it was to read the NIE. They mistakenly claimed, separately of each other, that Senator Jay Rockefeller, who did read the whole NIE, voted against the AUMF. But he actually voted for it. (link)
With that in mind, let's look at what Senators in congress at the time actually did with respect to the NIE. Only six Senators actually read the NIE according to a 2004 WaPo piece that is contradicted by both The Hill and Politico. The Hill posits that less than 10 Senators actually read the whole thing. But when they did a survey, 22 Senators, 8 Republicans and 14 Democrats, told The Hill that they read the whole report.
Interestingly, among the 2008 presidential candidates, only Senator Biden contends he read the NIE before casting his vote in support of authorizing war. A spokesperson for Biden told Politico that:
'Biden "chaired a closed Foreign Relations Committee briefing on the NIE on Sept. 24, 2002. At the hearing he was briefed in detail by George Tenet and Bob Walpole, the National Intelligence Officer for Strategic and Nuclear Programs. Sen. Biden viewed the NIE at this time and provided a forum for his colleagues to view as well, and in which there were extensive questions and answers on it."'
These dates don't match what has been given for the final NIE in other places, but there seems little doubt that Biden was being briefed on the sorts of things the NIE would contain. And that sort of briefing is something a lot of critics of Senator Clinton seem to misunderstand. That actually gets at the reason some of the other Senators said they did not read the whole thing. Obama supporter and former presidential candidate Senator John Kerry said (link):
In a conference call with reporters, Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, offered a mild defense of Clinton from accusations that, by not reading the intelligence estimate, she did not properly prepare for her vote on Iraq.
"It really depends frankly on what the total exposure to the intelligence is," said Kerry. "You don't have to read the NIE, honestly, if you've been briefed, if you sat in on hearings, if you have some familiarity with the topic."
"It really depends on the total picture and I'm not familiar with the total picture of what her due diligence was in this regard," he said. "It is helpful (to read the NIE) but it doesn't really tell you the whole picture.
A spokesman for Senator John Edwards had similar things to say to Politico:
Edwards spokesman Mark Kornblau emails that Edwards didn't read the classified version. He adds, "As a member of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, he was regularly briefed on the information that appeared in the NIE, which is essentially a summary report."
In contrast to those who sometimes luck into the right position without doing the requisite work to make a valid decision, sometimes there are people who make decisions based on the best facts available and still end up being wrong in the end. In the long run, isn't it better to have a president who does the work and examines all the evidence before making a decision? Even if they occasionally get things wrong they are likely to make far better decisions than those who make confident assertions without the benefit of the evidence.
So let's look at what Senator Clinton did. Here is what her staffer told Politico:
Senator Clinton was briefed multiple times by several members of the Administration on their intelligence regarding Iraq, which included the classified aspects of the NIE.
There are briefings similar to the ones mentioned by Kerry and Edwards. But in a recent interview on Meet the Press, Senator Clinton expanded on that. Notice the part in bold (link):
MR. RUSSERT: Again, learning from mistake, do you wish you had read the National Intelligence Estimate, which had a lot of caveats from the State Department and the Energy Department as to whether or not Saddam Hussein really had a biological and chemical and active nuclear program?
SEN. CLINTON: I was fully briefed by the people who wrote that. I was briefed by the people from, you know, the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Defense; all of the various players in that. And many people who read it--well, actually, not very many people read the whole thing because we were getting constant briefings. And people--some people read it and voted for the resolution, some people read it and voted against the resolution. I felt very well briefed. And it wasn't just what the Bush administration was telling us in the NIE, I went way outside of any kind of Bush administration sources; independent people, people from the Clinton administration, people in the British government. I looked as broadly as I could at how to assess this.
OK there is a broader discussion of her briefings. Now let's look at what else she said she did:
I went way outside of any kind of Bush administration sources; independent people, people from the Clinton administration, people in the British government. I looked as broadly as I could at how to assess this
.
None of the other Senators mentioned doing this. They talked about briefings from various agencies, but none of them said anything like "I went way outside of any kind of Bush administration sources; independent people, people from the Clinton administration, people in the British government. I looked as broadly as I could at how to assess this."
It is entirely possible that Senator Clinton did more work on this than any other Senator. Yet, because she did not read the entire NIE, she is accused of not doing due diligence, not from other Senators like John Kerry but from unknowledgable Obama supporters who do not understand what kind of briefings the Senators were getting.
It is interesting to note that among those 22 Senators who told The Hill they did read the entire NIE, more of them voted for the AUMF (12) than against it (10).
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